DISPATCHES

VATICAN: NO SIN TO VOTE DEM

News media that were obsessed with whether bishops might refuse
John Kerry communion because of his support for abortion rights
seemed to miss an important story in late June about the Vatican's
instructions that Catholics may vote for pro-choice politicians -- as
long as they're supporting the pol for other reasons.

Nathan Newman noted at www.nathannewman.org that Vatican officials
clearly told the bishops that voters are free to support pro-abortion
politicians without sinning, if they support them for other policies.
In his report on the Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic
Politicians (usccb.org), Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick
wrote: "As many of you know, Vatican officials offered both
principles and advised caution and pastoral prudence in the use of
sanctions ... It is important to note that Cardinal [Joseph]
Ratzinger makes a clear distinction between public officials and
voters, explaining that a Catholic would be guilty of formal
cooperation in evil only if he were to deliberately vote for a
candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on
abortion. However, when a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand
in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate
for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation,
which can be permitted if there are proportionate reasons." Ratzinger
is the Pope's prefect of doctrine.

Newman commented, "Essentially, the Vatican's official position is
that abortion IS NOT an issue that trumps every other issue
politically. By the logic of this statement, the Vatican is saying
that if a politician is pro-choice, but supports many other
priorities of the church, it is quite reasonable for Catholic voters
to support them over a politician who is pro-life, but fails to
support Catholic doctrine on many other issues."

The vast majority of US bishops made clear after their June 14-19
closed-door meeting in Denver that they want little to do with the
notion of denying Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians, Joe
Feuerherd noted July 7 at the National Catholic Reporter website
(natcath.org). In what may be seen as a pointed reference to
Republican efforts to enlist the Catholic clergy for partisan
purposes, McCarrick told the bishops, "We must speak the truth, but
we must not allow ourselves to become used in partisan politics
either by those who dispute our teaching on life and dignity or those
who reduce our teaching to a particular issue or partisan cause."
Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler reported that among those who
expressed a view, the bishops were opposed to refusing Communion by a
margin of roughly 3-1 but on a vote of 183-6 they approved a document
that left the decision to deny Communion to "the individual bishop in
accord with the established canonical and pastoral principles."

The declarations could be read as a rebuke to Bush, who reportedly
pressed the Pope to bring the bishops into line and get them actively
preaching against Democrats. Now those bishops who suggested that a
vote for pro-choice pols was a sin find themselves out on a limb --
and bishops don't like to be out on limbs, particularly if they'd
like to become archbishops or cardinals. The bishops' conference
statement makes it much easier for practicing Catholics to justify a
vote for Kerry and other pro-choice Democrats who otherwise are much
closer to the church's line on other social, economic and pro-life
issues. This also will be a relief to progressive priests and nuns
who don't want to preach against Democrats. The Catholic vote is
considered a key in the battleground states -- particularly the
Northeast, Midwest, Southwest and Florida. Loss of abortion as a
Democrat-killer for Catholics would put a big crimp in GOP plans.

BAPTISTS RAP BUSH CAMPAIGN. The Bush-Cheney campaign's
ham-fisted attempt to use church rosters for partisan purposes also
offended the Southern Baptist Convention, the Associated Press
reported July 3. "I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would
intrude on a local congregation in this way," said Richard Land,
president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission. "The bottom line is, when a church does it, it's
nonpartisan and appropriate. When a campaign does it, it's partisan
and inappropriate," he said. "I suspect that this will rub a lot of
pastors' fur the wrong way." The Bush campaign defended a memo in
which it sought to mobilize church members by providing church
directories to the campaign, arranging for pastors to hold
voter-registration drives and talking to various religious groups
about the campaign.

IT WAS A ROUGH FORTNIGHT for Bush and the press. First an
uppity Irish TV journalist had the gall to interrupt Bush's rambling
answers to pointed questions in an interview on the eve of his
troubled trip to Europe, which resulted in a White House protest to
the Irish TV network RTE (see "Pampered Bush meets real reporter,"
page 10). Then the only president we've got walked out of a press
briefing July 8 rather than answer questions about his close
relationship with indicted Enron chairman Ken Lay, Capitol Hill Blue
noted July 9. Bush, visibly upset, stormed off the stage when
reporters pressed him about the Enron exec, leaving Scott McClellan
to deal with the questions. McClellan said it has been "quite some
time" since Bush and Lay talked with each other, and he noted that
Lay supported Democrats as well as Republicans, although Lay clearly
favored the GOP, as he and his wife donated $882,580 to federal
candidates from 1989-2001, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics, and all but $86,470 went to Republicans. The Lays gave
$139,500 to Bush's political campaigns over the years, part of
$602,000 that Enron employees gave to Bush's various campaigns,
making Enron his leading political patron at the time of the
company's bankruptcy in 2001. Lay also brought in at leat $100,000
for Bush's 2000 campaign, putting him in "Pioneer" status as one of
the president's top fundraisers. (See "Kenny-Boy and George" and
"Give back Lay's loot, George," page 13.)

COURT PANS LAX NUKE DUMP REGS. Critics of the plan to store
nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., claimed victory July 9 when
the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the US
Environmental Protection Agency illegally set its radiation release
standards for groundwater. The EPA set 10,000 years as the period
during which radiation in the groundwater cannot exceed drinking
water standards at the site's boundary, but the court ruled the
Energy Policy Act requires that standards be consistent with the
National Academy of Sciences' recommendations, which call for a
tougher standard of 300,000 years or more. Public Citizen said the
Department of Energy's own analysis shows the Yucca site cannot meet
that standard. (See www.citizen.org.)

ECONOMIC RECOVERY MISSING. There was a shudder in the
economic recovery July 2 as the Department of Labor reported only
112,000 new jobs in June, far short of the number needed to keep up
with the growth of the labor force. Unemployment remained at 5.6%
while underemployment in the form of involuntary part-time work,
discouraged workers, and other marginally attached workers was 9.6%,
far higher than the 7.3% in March 2001 when the recession began. The
Bush administration promised that its 2003 tax cut package would
result in the creation of 5.5 million jobs by he end of 2004 --
306,000 new jobs each month. The Economic Policy Institute noted that
job creation has failed to meet the administration's projections in
10 of the past 12 months. (See JobWatch.org.) Nathan Newman at
nathannewman.org noted that the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank
reported total hours worked actually fell in June. The July 3
Washington Post reported June declines in both the length of the
average workweek and average weekly earnings. "The workweek, at 33.6
hours, seasonally adjusted, was the shortest since the department
began recording the data in 1964. The workweek has touched that low
before, including several months last year."

BENEATH THE HOODS. Many of the prisoners abused by US MPs
at Abu Ghraib prisoners were common criminals, not terrorists,
Newsweek (July 19) reported. Of 26 abused detainees whose cases were
reviewed by Newsweek, 13 were there for offenses ranging from theft
to rape. At least eight others were picked up as terrorists but were
released without charges. Hussein Mohsen Matar, who MPs ordered to
masturbate and rode on his naked back as he crawled on all fours, was
an accused thief. Haqi Ismail Abdul-Hamid, famously menaced by a
snarling dog, had kicked an Iraqi policemen and threatened to kill
Coalition soldiers, but he was ordered released as a mental case.
Satar Jabar's photograph, showing him hooded and wired up, has become
familiar to Iraqis, who derisively call it "the Statue of Liberty."
Far from being a dangerous insurgent, however, Jabar, 24, was an
accused car thief. "Not only did military police torture prisoners at
Abu Ghraib, they often tortured the wrong prisoners," Julie Scelfo
and Rod Nordland wrote.

US News reported July 9 that a review of 106 classified annexes to
the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba shows abuses were facilitated
-- and likely encouraged -- by a chaotic and dangerous environment
made worse by constant pressure from Washington to squeeze
intelligence from detainees. German TV reported that children as
young as 12 years were abused in Iraqi prisons.

MPs on June 29 raided an Iraqi building belonging to the Iraqi
ministry of the interior where prisoners were allegedly being
physically abused by Iraqi interrogators. Iraqi officials admitted
that around 150 prisoners taken in four days before in the first big
Iraqi-led anti-crime and anti-terrorism operation in Baghdad had been
physically abused during their arrest and subsequent questioning. One
of the Iraqi officers told the London Guardian: "The American
[MP] asked me why we had beaten the prisoners. I said we beat
the prisoners because they are all bad people. But I told him 'We
didn't strip them naked, photograph them or f**k them like you
did.'"

Also in Iraq, the Associated Press reported July 9 that contrary
to US government claims, the insurgency is led by well-armed Sunnis
angry about losing power, not foreign fighters. US military officials
told AP as many as 20,000 guerrillas have enough popular support
among nationalist Iraqis angered by the presence of US troops that
they cannot be militarily defeated. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government
has announced a law allowing it to impose martial law in troubled
regions.

ELECTORAL COLLAGE. The GOP recruited former Chicago Bears
football coach Mike Ditka to run for the US Senate in Illinois after
the party's nominee, former investment banker Jack Ryan, withdrew
from the race in June because of a sex scandal. State Sen. Barack
Obama is the heavily favored Democratic nominee but Dems feared Da
Coach's entry could mix things up. According to UPI on July 12, Ditka
told WGN-TV in Chicago, "I'm getting excited about it. I'm just
thinking about it." But his wife has different thoughts, according to
Politics1.com, saying that her 66-year-old husband was not prepared
to run for the US Senate. She added, "I'd divorce him if he did." ...
Maude Salinger, the niece of former JFK press secretary Pierre
Salinger, has joined the Doris "Granny D" Haddock campaign as chief
communications strategist for the New Hampshire Senate campaign (see
GrannyD.com). ... The Bush-Cheney campaign and the US Chamber of
Commerce apparently have low opinions of trial lawyers (unless they
need one to get out of trouble) but the people apparently have a more
favorable impression of trial lawyers. A Time poll reported July 9
that only 28.4% said being a trial lawyer negatively affects their
opinion of Edwards while 54.8% said that background makes them think
he fights for the average person. ... It was little noted in press
reports on Kerry's tour of the rural Midwest in early July that on
Day 2 he stopped to do some trapshooting with a 12-gauge shotgun. Not
only did he underscore his respect for the rights of hunters, but he
also hit 17 of 25 targets, which a longtime member of the club
described as "really good" for shooting with an unfamiliar gun. ...
Republican consultant Allen Raymond, former president of the
Alexandria, Va.-based GOP Marketplace LLC, pleaded guilty in federal
court to jamming Democratic telephone lines in several New Hampshire
cities to prevent Democrats from getting rides to polls on the 2002
general election day. The Justice Department, which prosecuted the
case, said an investigation into the telephone jamming continues.
Outgoing Gov. Jeanne Shaheen narrowly lost to then-Rep. John Sununu
in the Senate race.

Then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay in 2001 shook down Enron for a
$100,000 contribution to his political action committee in addition
to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican
Party, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised corporate Chairman
Ken Lay. The money was to be spent partly on "the redistricting
effort in Texas," said the email, which surfaced in the federal probe
of Enron, the Washington Post reported July 12. DeLay's fundraising
helped produce Republicans control of the Texas House for the first
time in 130 years and Texas congressional districts were redrawn to
send more Republican lawmakers to Washington. But DeLay and his
colleagues face criminal prosecution as Texas law bars corporate
financing of state legislature campaigns. A lawsuit also seeks $1.5
million in damages from DeLay's aides and one of his political action
committees -- Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) -- on behalf
of four defeated Democratic lawmakers. The House "ethics committee"
also is considering a complaint against DeLay, but four of the five
Republicans on the panel have received donations totalling $28,504
from DeLay's PAC over the past seven years, the Austin
American-Statesman reported.

Liberals' fears that George W. Bush might actually call off the
elections were magnified when Newsweek reported in its July 19
edition that the Bush administration is reviewing a proposal to allow
the postponement of the general election in case of a terrorist
attack. DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the new US Election
Assistance Commission, noted in a letter to the Homeland Security
Secretary Tom Ridge that, while a primary election in New York on
Sept. 11, 2001, was quickly suspended by that state's Board of
Elections after the attacks that morning, "the federal government has
no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a
federal election." Soaries, a Bush appointee who two years ago was a
GOP candidate for Congress, wants Ridge to seek emergency legislation
from Congress empowering his agency to make such a call.

Sen. John McCain swallowed his pride and said in a 2004
Bush-Cheney campaign ad that Bush "has led with great moral clarity
and firm resolve." McCain was slandered during the 2000 South
Carolina Republican primary as Bush partisans, desperate to cut
McCain down after his New Hampshire primary victory, suggested that
McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child and that he was not
really a Vietnam war hero. BuzzFlash.com also noted that in December
2002 McCain said he had never had people break their word to him the
way the Bush administration did. Water under the bridge now.

FLA. E-VOTE FLAWS. Florida is having problems with
touch-screen voting machines, the Miami Herald reported July 9, the
state but has not publicly acknowledged many of the flaws and doesn't
have a plan in place to fix them. "The situation has led to a
fractious relationship between Miami-Dade, the state and the
touch-screen machine maker, Electronic Systems & Software of
Omaha, Neb. At one point, a state Division of Elections email shows,
Miami-Dade Assistant County Attorney Murray Greenberg threatened to
sue the company -- and make it 'close up shop nationally' -- if more
problems were discovered with the equipment that was certified as
working two years ago," the Herald reported.

BUSH SNUBS NAACP. His feelings hurt by critical comments
NAACP leaders have said about him, George W. Bush became the first
president since Warren G. Harding in the early 1920s to refuse to
meet with the civil rights group. At first the White House said Bush
could not speak to the group meeting in Philadelphia July 10-15
because of "scheduling commitments," although he was campaigning in
Pennsylvania at the same time. But in a newspaper interview he
castigated the group's officers, who include President Kweisi Mfume
and Chairman Julian Bond. "I would describe my relationship with the
current leadership as basically nonexistent," Bush said."You've heard
the rhetoric and the names they've called me." Bond has accused
Republicans of "playing the race card in election after election." He
said they have "appealed to that dark underside of American culture,
to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," and
"preach racial neutrality and they practice racial division."

'CRAWFORD 5' CLEARED. A judge on July 9 dismissed all
charges against five anti-war activists who were arrested last year
in Crawford, Texas, on their way to George W. Bush's ranch. The five
were jailed overnight in March 2003 and were convicted in February of
violating the city's protest ordinance and fined $200 to $500. But
McLennan County Judge Tom Ragland in Waco ruled the ordinance was
overly broad and violated the First Amendment. The ordinance required
15 days' notice and a $25 fee before the police chief could issue a
permit for a protest. Crawford officials have since amended the
ordinance to require seven days of notice. "This is a great victory
for free speech in the president's own backyard," said Jim
Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "This
decision guarantees that the free speech rights of other protesters
will not be silenced by the city of Crawford." The five were stopped
by a police blockade en route to the "ranch" and were not
demonstrating at the time of their arrests, Harrington said.

MICROFILM SELF-DESTRUCTS. Microfilm of Bush's National
Guard pay records that might have cleared up his mysterious absence
in 1972 and 1973 were "inadvertently destroyed" in a freak accident,
the Pentagon told journalists who filed a lawsuit seeking Bush's
military records. Reporters had been trying to get the documents for
nearly half a year, but hit roadblock after roadblock until they were
informed that the microfilm existed. Then, two weeks later, they were
told that the microfilm did not exist, which came as news to experts
on military documentation. The chief of the Pentagon's "Freedom of
Information Office" said any further information could be provided
only through another FOI application. As Nick Confessore commented at
prospect.org/weblog July 9, "The logical thing to do, of course, is
for the president to release all the other records that could provide
some evidence that he completed his duty. After all, he told Tim
Russert, before a national television audience, that he would do so.
But he went back on his word then, so why should we expect anything
different now?"

HOUSE CUTS SMALL BIZ LOANS. The US House Appropriations
Committee has cut small-business loans, technical assistance and
entrepreneurial-development programs under the Commerce-Justice-State
(CJS) spending bill, UPI reported June 26. Going along with President
Bush's budget proposal, the CJS bill provides no funds for any of
SBA's lending programs, including the 7(a), Microloan and New Markets
Venture Capital programs. Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.,
Ranking Democrat on the House Small Business Committee, called the
cuts "totally inadequate and absurd, considering small businesses are
the main job creators and rely on these critical programs for their
success." The measure goes to the Senate. While federal funding for
microenterprise has decreased steadily over the past 3 years,
microenterprises &endash;- the nation's smallest businesses -&endash;
have played an increasingly large role in our nation's economy, the
Center for Rural Affairs reported. Across the US, over 27 million
micro-entrepreneurs account for 17% of all private employment.

RESOLVE MEXICAN TRUCK PROBLEMS. Serious safety and
environmental concerns must be addressed before the border is open to
long-haul Mexican trucks, Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public
Citizen's Texas office, told Texas lawmakers July 7. Questions
include the number of hours that Mexico-based drivers can remain on
the road without a break, insurance carried by Mexico-domiciled
carriers, the ability of US inspectors to check trucks and more. The
US Supreme Court on June 7 ruled against Public Citizen and other
groups who sued to stop Bush's order in 2002 to open the border after
a closed arbitration tribunal established under the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ruled that the trade agreement mandated
that trucks from Mexico be granted access. The trade tribunal also
ruled that special safety measures could be applied to ensure the
safety of Mexico-domiciled carriers. Currently, short-haul trucks are
allowed to cross from Mexico into the US and transfer their cargo
onto long-haul US trucks. The Bush administration's move would allow
Mexico-domiciled carriers to have long-haul access throughout the
USA. Find Smith's testimony at www.citizen.org.